Regional Cooperation in the Management of Transport-Systems

Abstract

"In the Netherlands, rapidly growing mobility patterns cause problems with respect to livability and accessibility. To cope with these common problems (public goods), the present administrative structure seems to be inappropriate. The possibility of achieving economies of scale and internalization of external effects exert a partly centralizing and a partly decentralizing influence on the administrative structure. Theoretically, this pressure may be met by voluntary cooperation between relevant units. Practically, processes of regionalization do appear, because the regional scale seems to be the appropriate level to deal with transport policy. Transport-flows do show a coherence at the regional level. Besides, transport systems fo meet the requirements of public goods to some extent. Therefore, regional transport systems may be considered to be a kind of common pool resource (or public good) with respect to the regional users.

"In the paper, the (more or less voluntary) cooperation between the users (managers) of the transport system, represented by municipalities and other parties concerned, will be described and explained. A causal model, modeling the variables that influence the cooperation between users (or managers), will be presented. This model will be used to value the cooperation in several regions in the Netherlands. These case studies may validate the presented model."